Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act of 2025
Floor Speech
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Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. President, sometimes, in Washington, you feel like there is nothing anyone can agree on. But one thing we can all agree on, no matter what your party, healthcare is too expensive.
I am a doctor who worked at a hospital in the public hospital system for the working uninsured and poorly insured. And it is not just the poor but middle-income Americans who have a really hard time right now affording their healthcare.
There is a little bit of irony here. ObamaCare came into existence, and it was supposed to decrease premiums by $2,400 a year. Since then, premiums have probably risen an aggregate of 100 percent since that law was passed. Part of this--part of this--is waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars. So we pay higher premiums, and the taxpayer is getting ripped off as well.
Here are just some recent examples. In November, a Federal jury in West Palm Beach convicted two individuals in a $233 million ObamaCare fraudulent enrollment scheme. Earlier this year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services identified 2.8 million duplicate enrollments across Medicaid and ObamaCare, which wastes an estimated $14 billion annually.
Just a few weeks ago, the Government Accountability Office released a report highlighting likely significant fraud in the ObamaCare Marketplace due to lack of proper verification. In this report, by the way, the GAO put up shoddy data on purpose to see if it would be accepted, and it was accepted across the board, even though they came nowhere close to providing the information they were supposed to provide.
The American people want lower healthcare costs. They also want us to protect their taxpayer dollars from fraud and abuse. So we need a healthcare system that protects patients and families but doesn't reward a ``get rich quick by any means'' fraudster looking to get an extra buck from the Federal taxpayer.
That is why Republicans have focused on a way forward on healthcare that actually lowers costs, fights fraud, and gives power to the patient, not profit to the insurance company, not ill-gotten gains to the criminal.
My Democratic colleagues are about to put up a resolution that would do a Congressional Review Act on a recent rule put out by the administration to fight waste, fraud, and abuse. For whatever reason, this resolution wants to fight fighting waste, fraud, and abuse. And if the CRA passes, it will eliminate commonsense measures for waste, fraud, and abuse--to eliminate them, to at least address them--as well as safeguards ensuring that subsidies go to patients who qualify, those who need it to afford coverage.
By the way, the resolution being offered by my Democratic colleagues will raise insurance premiums by 5 percent. They are offering a CRA that raises premiums, the effect of, by 5 percent. That is money that a family could use to pay their car note, their flood insurance note, their grocery bill--you name it--rent for their apartment, and, instead, it is going to insurance companies.
I don't quite know why my Democratic colleagues are so entrenched in protecting a broken system. They are willing to raise premiums by 5 percent to protect the status quo.
All that said, I am a doctor who worked in the public hospital system for over 20 years, trying to bring healthcare to people who otherwise couldn't afford it. Let's work together. Let's find a solution that actually lowers costs, doesn't increase premiums. Let's find a solution that squeezes out waste, eliminates and prosecutes fraud, not a system in which they are rewarded.
As a doctor, as a conservative, as an American, as a steward of the Federal taxpayer--when I say Federal taxpayer, I mean you and me and everybody watching and everyone in the Gallery--let's steward that money correctly. I urge my colleagues to reject this resolution and continue with bipartisan, important work to make healthcare more affordable.
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